How the Plutocrats Behind ‘Fix the Debt’ Contribute to the Deficit

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Paul Krugman calls them “deficit scolds” — the wealthy Washingtonians and Wall Streeters behind the Fix the Debt campaign who are obsessed with cutting earned benefits programs and whipping up “fiscal cliff” hysteria, when in reality the prescription right now for a robust economic recovery calls for public stimulus spending to boost employment and grow the economy.

These one-percenters want to bring failed European austerity to American shores, even though, according the New Yorker, the United Kingdom recently officially admitted that its austerity policies have been a disaster — “Britain’s deficit remains stubbornly high, its people have been suffering through a double-dip recession, and many observers now expect the country to lose its ‘AAA’ credit rating.”

Americans are being inundated with advertising from Fix the Debt about the urgency of avoiding the “fiscal cliff,” or what Krugman calls the “austerity bomb.” They claim to be coming from a centrist, bipartisan point of view, but a closer examination of the billionaire benefactors behind Fix the Debt reveals them to have long had an agenda of lowering taxes for the rich and cutting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits for millions of hard-working middle class and poor Americans.

Ironically, the deficit scolds behind Fix the Debt have helped contribute to the deficit by advocating for cutting tax rates on the wealthy, such as capital gains, and creating the unemployment crisis through mass layoffs.

Here are some of the over-100 Fix the Debt hypocrites who claim to care about reducing the deficit, but have done more than their share to actually make the deficit worse (even though deficits don’t matter in an economic recovery and reducing the deficit too fast could cause a double-dip recession):